Discordia || Cyborg Liberation?

Information InFiltration. The Anti-Blender Consortium.

[- Cyborg Liberation?
By GeertLovink, Section Filter It Yourself! Posted on Tue Aug 5th, 2003 at 10:35:50 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
Cyborg Liberation Front July 30 - August 5, 2003

[ --------------------------------------------- ]

I got a bit of a problem with this. I think you can't get more mainstream in the USA then Kurzweil. He's a boring corporate neo-conservative that did well during the Wired-dotcom years but then disappeared from the radar. To suggest that cyborgs need to liberate sounds foolish to me. Liberated from what? From transhumanism perhaps... yes. Cyborgs are the norm and have been for a long time.

Any thoughts on this?

Ciao, Geert

Cyborg Liberation Front
July 30 - August 5, 2003
*************************
The World Transhumanist Association
conference at Yale University in
late June brought together academics
and activists to lay the groundwork
for a society that would admit as
citizens and companions intelligent
robots, cyborgs made from a free
mixing of human and machine parts,
and fully organic,...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2252&m=8351

[ --------------------------------------------- ]

Cyborg Liberation? | 6 comments

[new] Transhumanist Association (Avg. Score: 3.00 / Raters: 1) (#1)
by Timothy Jaeger on Thu Aug 7th, 2003 at 12:32:22 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://www.thelast100years.com

Geert, all,

This seems to be the same type of post/trans-humanism that the Wired crowd espoused so much during the 90s (and I only caught the late cusp of that)...The links to some of the projects associated with the conference, like the PRIMO posthuman futurist body

PRIMO seem to be more in line with what Koolhaas is trying to achieve with the PRADA aesthetic/stores and making a quick buck on the path to "Spaceship Earth" than any trans-humanism that might be remotely usable and valuable to a great number of people.

I think the view that the Institute for Applied Autonomy delivers is more in-line with the "reality" of what is happening at these conferences: much of this stuff is going to go to use in our military-industrial police state rather than just be altruistically turned over to the private sector.

Some of the thoughts about turning over our future to smarter cyborgs sounds equally foolish. Like in any tech-industry, servicing faulty machines is big business, and computers and "advances" in technology, especially these trans/cyber-human advances, are going to need META-BRAIN repair centers...the only thing is, considering that funding for education in the USA is being cut drastically by the Bush Administration in favor of funds for wars (oops, we're running on a deficit here..), the only people that will be able to afford such luxuries as Designer Bodies will be the ultra-wealthy.

-Tim Jaeger
timjaeger@thing.net
thelast100years.com

[new] stelarc is obsolete.... (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#3)
by amy on Thu Aug 7th, 2003 at 10:07:40 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://plagiarist.org

to quote my friend übergeek: "stelarc is obsolete - he got fragged at a lan party."

which roughly translates to "everything shocking about the future gets turned into toys before it even gets here."

remember when immersive VR came along, and made us all lose our minds as we disappeared into a false reality we could no longer distinguish from the real world? ... no?

oh, but this is the body.. the body is sacred and natural, right?... except for those folks who have prostheses of course, or those of us who have experienced injuries that temporarily or permanently make some of our body parts feel and work more like external objects than "part of us"... sometimes the things that connect most directly and naturally to your brain aren't parts of your natural body at all... already the start and end of the "body" isn't an absolute; there are a range of values that vary from person to person, just like anything else. it doesn't make some of us less human than others.

the "mind enhancement" stuff is arguably the most cybosexytranspostalhumanidifying. (see tim's primo link.) i'm not sure why VCR's and computer hard drives generally seem to be the most popular metaphors for this. maybe it's just me, but if i'm going to gain enhanced powers, i'd rather think of myself as becoming more like einstein than a VCR - or even a DVD player.

but maybe that's where the science fiction aspect comes in. if i can have a mind like a DVD player, i can rent plenty of sci-fi. aha, that explains it.. this whole posthumanist craze must be sponsored by the MPAA...

# begin amy's sig
-- Discordia is nice.
# end amy's sig

[new] However.. (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#2)
by Timothy Jaeger on Thu Aug 7th, 2003 at 12:46:51 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://www.thelast100years.com

However, that being said, many of the links are fascinating (especially the "Singularity" stuff..)

SINGULARITY

A lot of this stuff reads as being 'retro' to me, though, and seems no different than the kind of stuff coming out of 80s sci-fi, possibly from magazines like FUTURE WORLD (sorry, can't find a link to old issues of it..).

The transhumanist conference Seems like a return to a "cyber" rather than "postcyberpunk" era that we live in now to me.. ;)
Notes Towards a Postcyberpunk manifesto

Ah, singularity.... by ericscoles, 10/01/2003 01:42:59 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME (none / 0)
trans.... by Anonymous Stranger, 09/24/2003 11:01:38 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME (none / 0)
transhumanist conference - racism of hybrid-trek. by JohnHutnyk, 08/08/2003 08:48:43 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME (none / 0)

Cyborg Liberation? | 6 comments

[- CREATE ACCOUNT
so you can post & vote!

[- how to post and vote
[- faq (discordia q&a)
[- faq en español
[- search
[- send feedback

[- sick of english?
[- multi-lingual babelfilter

submit story | create account | faq | search